Asimov's Mysteries

Mike obeyed with alacrity, bringing with him three Plexatron units to be used as makeshift cups. Moore filled each precisely to the brim. He was going to be drunk with a vengeance.

'Gentlemen,' he said solemnly, 'a toast.' The three raised the mugs in unison, 'Gentlemen, I give you the year's supply of good old H2O we used to have.'

Anniversary

The annual ritual was all set.

It was the turn of Moore's house this year, of course, and Mrs. Moore and the children had resignedly gone to her mother's for the evening.

Warren Moore surveyed the room with a faint smile. Only Mark Brandon's enthusiasm kept it going at the first, but he himself had come to like this mild remembrance. It came with age, he supposed; twenty additional years of it. He had grown paunchy,thin-haired, soft jowled, andworst of all-sentimental.

So an the windows were polarized into complete darkness and the drapes were drawn. Only occasional stipples of wall were illuminated, thus celebrating the poor lighting and the terrible isolation of that day of wreckage long ago.

There were spaceship rations in sticks and tubes on the table and, of course, in the center an unopened bottle of sparkling green Jabra water, the potent brew that only the chemical activity of Martian fungi could supply.

Moore looked at his watch. Brandon would be here soon; he was never late for this occasion. The only thing that disturbed him was the memory of Brandon's voice on the tube: 'Warren, I have a surprise for you this time. Wait and see. Wait and see.'

Brandon, it always seemed to Moore, aged little. The younger man had kept his slimness, and the intensity with which he greeted all in life, to the verge of his fortieth birthday. He retained the ability to be in high excitement over the good and in deep despair over the bad. His hair was going gray, but except for that, when Brandon walked up and down, talking rapidly at the top of his voice about anything at all, Moore didn't even have to close his eyes to see the panicked youngster on the wreck of the Silver Queen. The door signal sounded and Moore kicked the release without turning round. 'Come, Mark.'

It was a strange voice that answered, though; softly, tentatively, 'Mr. Moore?'

Moore turned quickly. Brandon was there, to be sure, but only in the background, grinning with excitement. Someone else was standing before him; short, squat, quite bald, nut-brown and with the feel of space about him.

Moore said wonderingly, 'Mike Shea-Mike Shea, by all space.' They pounded hands together, laughing.

Brandon said, 'He got in touch with me through the office. He remembered I was with Atomic Products-'

'It's been years,' said Moore. 'Lets see, you were on Earth twelve years ago-'

'He's never been here on an anniversary,' said Brandon. 'How about that? He's retiring now. Getting out of space to a place he's buying in Arizona. He came to say hello before he left-stopped off at the city just for that-and I was sure he came for the anniversary. "What anniversary?" says the old jerk.'

Shea nodded, grinning. 'He said you made a kind of celebration out of it every year.'

'You bet,' said Brandon enthusiastically, 'and this will be the first one with all three of us here, the first real anniversary. It's twenty years, Mike; twenty years since Warren scrambled over what was left of the wreck and brought us down to Vesta.'

Shea looked about. 'Space ration, eh? That's old home week to me. And Jabra. Oh, sure, I remember… twenty years. I never give it a thought and now, all of a sudden, it's yesterday. Remember when we got back to Earth finally?'

'Do I!' said Brandon. The parades, the speeches. Warren was the only real hero of the occasion and we kept saying so, and they kept paying no attention. Remember?'

'Oh, well,' said Moore. 'We were the first three men ever to survive a spaceship crash We were unusual and anything unusual is worth a celebration. These things are irrational.'

'Hey,' said Shea, 'any of you remember the songs they wrote? That marching one? "You can sing of routes through Space and the weary maddened pace of the-"'

Brandon joined in with his clear tenor and even Moore added his voice to the chorus so that the last line was loud enough to shake the drapes. 'On the wreck of the Silver Que-e-en,' they roared out, and ended laughing wildly.

Brandon said, 'Let's open the Jabra for the first little sip. This one bottle has to last all of us all night.'

Moore said, 'Mark insists on complete authenticity. I'm surprised he doesn't expect me to climb out the window and human-fly my way around the building.'

'Well, now, that's an idea,' said Brandon.

'Remember the last toast we made?' Shea held his empty glass before him and intoned, ' "Gentlemen, I give you the year's supply of good old H2O we used to have." Three drunken bums when we landed. Well, we were kids. I was thirty and I thought I was old. And now,' his voice was suddenly wistful, 'they've retired me.'

'Drink!'said Brandon. Today you'rethirty again, and we remember the day on the Silver Queen even if no one else does. Dirty, fickle public.'

Moore laughed. 'What do you expect? A national holiday every year with space ration and Jabra the ritual food and drink?'

'Listen, we're still the only men ever to survive a spaceship crash and now look at us. We're in oblivion.'

'It's pretty good oblivion. We had a good time to begin with and the publicity gave us a healthy boost up the ladder. We are doing well, Mark. And so would Mike Shea be if he hadn't wanted to return to space.'

Shea grinned and shrugged his shoulders. 'That's where I like to be. I'm not sorry, either. What with the insurance compensation I got, I have a nice piece of cash now to retire on.'

Brandon said reminiscently, 'The wreck set back Trans-space Insurance a real packet. Just the same, there's still something missing. You say "Silver Queen" to anyone these days and he can only think of Quentin, if he can think of anyone.'

'Who?' said Shea.

'Quentin. Dr. Horace Quentin. He was one of the non-survivors on the ship. You say to anyone, "What about the three men who survived?" and they'll just stare at you, "Huh?" they'll say.'

Moore said calmly, 'Come, Mark, face it. Dr. Quentin was one of the world's great scientists and we three are just three of the world's nothings.'

'We survived. We're still the only men on record to survive.'

'So? Look, John Hester was on the ship, and he was an important scientist too. Not in Quentin's league, but important. As a matter of fact, I was next to him at the last dinner before the rock hit us. Well, just because Quentin died in the same wreck, Hester's death was drowned out. No one ever remembers Hester died on the Silver Queen. They only remember Quentin. We may be forgotten too, but at least we're alive.'

'I tell you what,' said Brandon after a period of silence during which Moore's rationale had obviously failed to take, 'we're marooned again. Twenty years ago today, we were marooned off Vesta. Today, we're marooned in oblivion. Now here are the three of us back together again at last, and what happened before can happen again. Twenty years ago, Warren pulled us down to Vesta. Now let's solve this new problem.'

'Wipe out the oblivion, you mean?' said Moore. 'Make ourselves famous?'

'Sure. Why not? Do you know any better way of celebrating a twentieth anniversary?'

'No, but I'd be interested to know where you expect to start. I don't think people remember the Silver Queen at all, except for Quentin, so you'll have to think of some way of bringing the wreck back to mind. That's just to begin with.'